 A weak link in the elementary education chain

India is ignoring the necessity for strong capacity building of the many NGOs engaged in educational
improvement

For about three decades now, a large number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are
intensively engaged in the task of improving elementary education in the country. A paper in the
Economic & Political Weekly of May 2005, titled “How Large Is India’s Non-Profit Sector?”, estimates
about three million paid workers in the voluntary sector through 1.2 million organisations. The paper
estimates that 20.4% of this workforce (about six lakh workers) is engaged in education. According
to a newspaper report, “India has 31 lakh NGOs, more than double the number of schools” (August
1, 2015), the number of NGOs in the country was more than 31 lakh — more than double the
number estimated in the above mentioned paper. With these data, it should be a safe guess to
estimate that there are now more than 12 lakh NGO workers engaged in education (even if there
could be only 50% of them in school education, and the remainder involved in improving reach and
quality). The lower end of the estimated number of NGO staff working for the improvement of
quality and reach in elementary education must be over three lakh.

 Scope of work

It is most probable that these workers are engaged in direct teaching in classrooms, demonstrating
various activities and methods to teachers, conducting teacher workshops and so on. Most NGOs
and large foundations believe that these people work as catalysts and influence the functioning of
the system. For various reasons, they are supposed to be more effective than regular employees in
the government system.

There is a lot of discussion around education and the Continuous Professional Development of
Teachers (CPDT). These NGO workers have a significant part in the CPDT, for example, in annual in-
service training and pedagogy improvement workshops. We should be asking ourselves whether
these workers are adequately prepared for this difficult task. As an example, let us take quality
improvement, which is currently the biggest concern in education.

Anyone who can successfully contribute to the improvement of educational quality must have some
idea of what educational quality happens to be. A very common notion of what good quality school
is in our society is based on a high score in the board examinations. Suppose the curriculum is
irrelevant to the life of people (as it is often claimed), would it still indicate high quality? Further,
suppose that high scoring is achieved by subjecting children to severe punishment and stress, would
it still remain an indicator of high quality? If the response to last two questions is negative, then we
can conclude that appropriateness of curriculum and pedagogy also need to be considered in
defining quality of education. But how do we know what good or appropriate curriculum and
pedagogy are? On what criteria can we decide that?

 Key documents, framework

The four documents currently providing a framework of principles, guidelines and legal stipulations
to deal with such questions are the National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCF), The Right of
Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE), the National Curriculum Framework for
Teacher Education 2009 (NCFTE) and the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020). Even if the NCF
and NCFTE change in the near future, the new documents are likely to have much in common with
the present ones. Therefore, it is worthwhile to assume that any worker engaged in education
improvement should reasonably understand these and similar documents. Let us take an example
from each one of these documents to see what is involved.

Regarding pedagogy, the RTE, in Section 29(e), recommends “learning through activities, discovery
and exploration in a child friendly and child-centered manner”. To use this definition in school
improvement, the NGO worker has to ask himself questions such as : What is discovery? How and
what can children learn through discovery? Does discovery method have any limitations as a
pedagogy? Further, the NCF recommends constructivist pedagogy. What is the constructivist
method of learning? Is it the same as recommended by the NCF?

On curriculum, NEP 2020, paragraph 4.23 says “certain subjects, skills, and capacities should be
learned by all students to become good, successful, innovative, adaptable, and productive human
beings in today’s rapidly changing world. … these skills include: scientific temper and evidence-based
thinking; creativity and innovativeness; sense of aesthetics and art; oral and written communication;
health and nutrition; physical education, fitness, wellness, and sports; collaboration and teamwork;
problem solving and logical reasoning; vocational exposure and skills; digital literacy, coding, and
computational thinking; ethical and moral reasoning; knowledge and practice of human and
Constitutional values; gender sensitivity; Fundamental Duties; citizenship skills and values”.

If we want to use this policy, we need to understand what paragraphs such as the above say. One
has to note the complexity and profusion of terms used. What do all these words and phrases
mean? Is the paragraph internally consistent? Is this paragraph consistent with the NCF? Do the NCF
and NEP need to be consistent with each other?

The paragraph from NEP 2020 also highlights certain aims of education: namely, to make all children
“good, successful, innovative, adaptable, and productive human beings in today’s rapidly changing
world”. Are these aims consistent with each other? Do they have any relative weightage? What if
some schools produce children who are highly successful, innovative, adaptable, productive,
extremely competitive, and uncaring for others? Would we be happy to call them “good” and
consider such an education to be high quality education?

The last example, the NCFTE (page 23), says that we need teachers who “[P]romote values of peace,
democratic way of life, equality, justice, liberty, fraternity, secularism and zeal for social
reconstruction”. Are these two quotes, one from NEP 2020 and the other from the NCFTE,
compatible with each other? Are they emphasising the same values or have significant difference
with each other?

 Need for deep insights

It seems bringing about improvement in the quality of education is not a simple task that one can
accomplish just by desire, hard work and interaction with teachers. It seems to require answers to a
plethora of questions. Could it be that our attempts for over three decades have failed, at least
partly, because most people working for improvement do not have reasonable answers to such
questions?

Just reading these documents may be adequate for a layman not engaged in educational activities
and teacher capacity building. But for someone engaged in CPDT, a study of these documents alone
will neither answer the questions raised above nor give him/her any better insight into these
documents. The positions taken in these and other such documents, as well as in decision making in
education, are based on a vast repertoire of theoretical knowledge. A major part of this theoretical
knowledge is drawn from the philosophy of education, political theories, sociology of education,
psychology of learning and development, and a contextual understanding of the current needs of
our society. Understanding an adequate part of all this and their implications for curriculum,
pedagogy, and teacher development, therefore, becomes imperative to be effective in quality
improvement or to contribute to good education.

 An immediate task

If the argument outlined so far is even tentatively acceptable, then a strong programme for capacity
building of NGO workers engaged in educational improvement becomes an urgent need.

However, NGOs do not seem to be paying adequate attention to this very important area. Nor do
universities and teacher education colleges seem to be offering any short term and/or distance
learning courses for this sector. If we want to implement NEP 2020 — presently leaving its merits
and demerits aside — and really want to see improvement in the quality of education available to
our children, we need to pay very close attention to capacity building of this vast workforce engaged
in the field. Without adequate preparation, the assumption that the mere appointment of a person
in an NGO and being placed in the field will automatically develop the capabilities of these workers is
incorrect, and a case of sheer injustice to them, to the education system, and to children in schools.

 Phased manufacturing policy that is hardly smart

 Largely applicable to the mobile phone manufacturing sector, the plan has fared poorly in
domestic value addition

Last week, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said it had approved 16
firms in the mobile manufacturing sector for the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme (for large-
scale electronics manufacturing, notified on April 1, 2020;https://bit.ly/3nPqgNK)to transform India
into a major mobile manufacturing hub. These are five domestic and five foreign mobile phone
producers and six component manufacturers. The PLI comes on the back of a phased manufacturing
programme (PMP) that began in 2016-17 and was supposed to culminate in 2019-20. The PMP
incentivised the manufacture of low value accessories initially, and then moved on to the
manufacture of higher value components. This was done by increasing the basic customs duty on the
imports of these accessories or components. The PMP was implemented with an aim to improve
value addition in the country.
  More imports in India

Firms such as Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo, and OnePlus have invested in India, but mostly through their
contract manufacturers. As a result, production increased from $13.4 billion in 2016-17 to $31.7
billion in 2019-20. However, analysis of factory-level production data from the Annual Survey of
Industries (ASI) shows that in 2017-18, value addition for surveyed firms (barring two outliers)
ranged from 1.6% to 17.4%, with most of the firms being below 10%. For the majority of the
surveyed firms, more than 85% of the inputs were imported. Comparable UN data for India, China,
Vietnam, Korea and Singapore (2017-2019), show that except for India, all countries exported more
mobile phone parts than imports — which indicates the presence of facilities that add value to these
parts before exporting them. India, on the other hand, imported more than it exported, the least
being in 2019 when its imports of mobile phone parts were 25 times the exports. Therefore, while
the PMP policy increased the value of domestic production, improvement in local value addition
remains a work-in-progress.

Further, in September 2019, Chinese Taipei contested the raise in tariffs under the PMP. If the PMP
is found to be World Trade Organization (WTO) non-compliant, then we may be flooded with
imports of mobile phones which might make the local assembly of mobile phones unattractive. This
will affect the operations of the mobile investments done under the PMP.

 Focus on value of production

The new PLI policy offers an incentive subject to thresholds of incremental investment and sales of
manufactured goods; these thresholds vary for foreign and domestic mobile firms. Thus, focus
remains on increasing value of domestic production, and not local value addition. According to our
calculations, if implemented in toto , an additional capacity of 60 crore mobile phones per year may
be onstream at the end of the PLI, i.e. FY25.

 Shift from China is unlikely

Chinese firms that dominate the Indian market are not a part of the PLI policy. Thus their capacity
expansion, if any, will be in addition to this. India produced around 29 crore units of mobile phones
for the year 2018-19; 94% of these were sold in the domestic market, with the remaining being
exported. This implies that much of the incremental production and sales under the PLI policy will
have to be for the export market.

Recently, a study by Ernst & Young for the India Cellular & Electronics Association showed that if the
cost of production of a mobile phone is say 100 (without subsidies), then the effective cost (with
subsidies and other benefits) of manufacturing mobile phone in China is 79.55, Vietnam, 89.05, and
India (including PLI), 92.51. This shows that incentives under the PLI policy may not turn out to be a
game-changing move, and it may be premature to expect a major chunk of mobile manufacturing to
shift from China to India.

It may also be useful to recall that mobile phone investments that occurred around 2005, targeted
relatively local and low value export markets, which is being followed by the incumbent mobile
manufacturers in the county. Numbers show that though India’s mobile phone exports grew from
$1.6 billion in 2018-19 to $3.8 billion in 2019-20, the per unit value declined from $91.1 to $87,
respectively. Thus, our export competitiveness seems to be in mobiles with lower selling price.
However, for foreign firms chosen under the PLI policy, the incentive will be computed on the basis
of the invoice value of phones available at and above Rs. 15,000 ($204.65). This is surprising as it is
clear that the PLI policy does not strengthen our current export competitiveness in mobile phones;
and markets with higher average selling price have lower volumes.

 Difficult for domestic firms

The five foreign firms that have been chosen are Samsung and four of Apple’s contract
manufacturers. Samsung and two of Apple’s contract manufacturers already have facilities in India,
and can be expected to continue with their strategy of dependence on imported inputs. Domestic
firms have been nearly wiped out from the Indian market. So, their ability to take advantage of the
PLI policy and grab a sizeable domestic market share seems difficult. Domestic firms may have the
route of exporting cheaper mobile phones to other low-income countries. However, their
performance in the last couple of years has not been promising. For example, among the chosen
domestic firms, Lava International reported exports of Rs. 324 crore in FY18, while Optiemus
Electronics exported Rs. 83 crore in FY18 and Rs. 4 lakh in FY19. Thus, how well they respond to the
opportunity that the PLI policy provides is an open question.

 Supply chain colocation

Finally, the six component firms that have been given approval under the ‘specified electronic
components segment’, though a welcome step, do not complete the mobile manufacturing
ecosystem. For example, literature shows that when Samsung set up shop in Vietnam, it relied
heavily on its Korean suppliers which co-located with it to produce intermediate inputs, so much so
that 63 among Samsung’s 67 suppliers then were foreign. It was a surprise when it was found
through our primary survey that though Samsung is invested hugely in India, it has not colocated its

supply chain in the country.

In summary, the PMP policy, since 2016-17 has barely been helpful in raising domestic value
addition in the industry even though value of production expanded considerably. As backward
integration via tariff protection is likely to come up against WTO rules, the new PLI focus is on
increasing domestic production, and not value addition. The policy has separately licensed six
component manufacturers to start domestic manufacturing. This may not succeed as the assemblers
and component manufacturers move together. A first step in this direction could be to encourage
foreign firms chosen under the PLI policy to colocate their supply ecosystems in the country.

 Tackling the roots of discrimination

 It is imperative to establish both individual culpability and institutional accountability

Ram Vilas Paswan earned many distinctions. He was the only leader to be a Central Minister under
six Prime Ministers. His eclecticism in ideology and dexterity in politics could only be a dream for
many a politician. Such a feat required of him to be an agnostic in his identity as well. He couldn’t
help being a Dalit and he didn’t hide it, either. Being mindful of electoral dynamics, he always sought
to represent lower castes, Muslims and, of course, Dalits. His Dalit critics were upset that he clubbed
the three groups together for every demand, diluting the ‘uniqueness’ of Dalits.

Leaving aside his first ministerial post as Labour and Welfare Minister, Paswan throughout helmed
‘non-reserved’ ministries such as Railways and Communications. He was as mainstream a national
leader as they come. But for most of the media, Paswan died a Dalit. He was a Dalit icon, a Dalit face
in the Union Cabinet and what have you.

 Creating pictures in our head

From Ambedkar to Paswan, most of the media clubs Dalits’ caste identity with their
accomplishments. But when was the last time the media reported on a national leader as a Brahmin
icon or a Bania face? Consider the deleterious effects of such cultural reflex. Sections of the media
are complicit in creating and stereotyping what the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass called
the “pictures in our head.”

The visual media, especially cinema, is guilty of perpetuating all the dross in society. A recent Telugu
movie, Sarileru Neekevvaru , portrays the heroine in a grossly insulting way. As if she is the tail of a
monkey, she literally chases the hero till the last frame. In that chase, she stands denuded of agency,
dignity, or just decency that is any person’s due. Calling it humour would be a fig leaf to hide sexism.
A railway official who must be a graduate, by virtue of his job, is cast as an obese black man capable
of generating only derision and laughter.

Here is a movie produced by mostly brown-skinned men; it’s been made for a mostly brown-skinned
audience. But the movie stands out also as an essay of the brown man asserting the white man’s
supremacy over him. In fact, for example, our age-old infatuation with the white skin explains how,
when the actual White Man had showed up on our shores, we had handed him the keys to the
country, expressing our habitual obedience.

 Three incidents

This year we have witnessed many incidents of violence, inhumanity and blatant discrimination
which highlight how the problems of caste, race and gender remain intractable. Let us examine
three such incidents.

The murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white policeman in the U.S. has forever
damaged its reputation as a city on a hill. A female Dalit doctor at the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, found the harassment by her upper caste senior so unbearable that she tried
to end her life. Fortunately, she failed in the attempt. A Dalit employee of Cisco Systems was
discriminated against by upper caste supervisors in the company’s American headquarters and the
same is testified by a California government’s lawsuit.
By no means are these acts of cruelty mindless. Nor are they to be ignored as some kind of clash
between two parties, where one of them just happened to be from a minority group. The trail of
death and destruction these acts leave goes beyond the immediate context. In addition to harming
its victim, an act of discrimination does something far more insidious and long-lasting. It reinforces
rules, norms and customs that allow or sanction such crimes. We must not forget the wider impact
of a case like Floyd’s murder. The damage to the psyche of those millions of young blacks who
protest against racism is severe and long-lasting.

The imperative for us is to demand institutional accountability. The ones who should be in the dock
are, in addition to the accused, those who head the institutions where acts of discrimination take
place. In the AIIMS case, the upper caste senior allegedly told the lady Dalit doctor, “You’re a SC, stay
within your limits.”

The attempted suicide led to the filing of an FIR and AIIMS set up two committees, including an
internal one, to investigate the matter. Their brief appears to be to protect the institution’s
reputation, rather than standing by the victim even if they found merit in her allegations. The
internal committee’s investigation produced this gem: “Although the accused didn’t explicitly use
gender or caste-based remarks against the victim, but he did use words like ‘billi’, ‘mind your
level’...”

“Mind your level”? What ought to be that level, if her caste and gender were not part of her level?
This is how institutions resort to what can be called intentional failures to subvert the laws meant to
be invoked in such cases. The obvious reason for AIIMS’s illogic is to obviate the invocation of the
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 as well as the Sexual
Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013. These two
acts mandate swift action. AIIMS is guilty of making a mockery of the law.

 Like a rattlesnake

Therefore, institutions must be made accountable. A simple police investigation would unearth
wrongdoing by several top functionaries at AIIMS to subvert the law. The greatest folly would be to
treat the matter as an individual case.

Caste and race, like a rattlesnake, distract us by their myriad and daily abominations and we hardly
notice their bite. Each act of hatred and violence deserves its own justice. But we must treat them as
mere symptoms and look for the real factors that keep hatred and discrimination enduring and
pervasive.

 Labour’s data lost

 The government’s tendency to be opaque and blame states is not new

Last month, the Code on Social Security; the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working
Conditions; and the Code on Industrial Relations were passed in Parliament with little debate. In
August 2019, the Code on Wages was passed. The four codes together subsume more than 40
labour laws.

The mission statement from the Ministry of Labour and Employment reads: “Improving the working
conditions and the quality of life of workers through laying down and implementing policies/
programmes/ schemes/ projects for providing social security and welfare measures, regulating
conditions of work, occupational health and safety of workers, eliminating child labour from
hazardous occupations and processes, strengthening enforcement of labour laws and promoting skill
development and employment services”. However, a cogent critique of the labour codes by the
Working People’s Charter shows how they contradict the Labour Ministry’s mission statement and
lack any social protection measures. Moreover, the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex level
consultative committee concerned with labour, last met in 2015. Isn’t it odd that even a nationally
constituted body such as the ILC was not consulted before the passage of codes that are going to
affect 90% of the workforce? For the nearly 50 crore ‘informal’ workers in India, the codes come as
another cruel joke when the embers of the largest crisis for workers have not died down.

 Lack of data

On September 14, in response to questions in Parliament concerning the deaths of migrant workers
during the lockdown, the Labour Minister simply said that no data were available. In an almost
prescient move, four researchers — Aman, Kanika, Krushna and Thejesh — had been painstakingly
tracking the number of non-COVID deaths since the lockdown was announced. Many surveys have
documented the destruction of lives, livelihoods and increased hunger. However, like other
independent research was disregarded in the PIL concerning migrant workers in the Supreme Court,
these numbers too were disregarded. It is ironic that a government that is obsessed with
surveillance purportedly for the welfare of its citizens has not kept track of data that actually matter.

Although the decision to impose a lockdown was dictated by the Central government without any
consultation with the State governments, Central government spokespersons were quick to hide
behind the veil of federalism. When Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) reached out to the
Labour Ministry during the lockdown urging it to facilitate the safe passage of migrant workers, we
learnt that the workers’ data at the time were very thin. State governments were blamed for it. The
script remained unchanged even in Parliament. Given the scale of the crisis, shouldn’t the Labour
Ministry have constituted a task force and fast-tracked the collation of such data as soon as the crisis
began to unfold?

Neither is the tendency for opacity nor is the tendency to take recourse to federalism new for this
government. Take, for instance, the suppression of data on farmer suicides, starvation deaths, and
the Consumption Expenditure Survey. Similarly, consider the onslaught on poorer State
governments such as Bihar when the Central government refused to pay its share of the GST. The
Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act stipulates, among other things, payment of displacement and
journey allowance by employers. However, this was not enforced. The order by the Home Ministry
(March 29) asking employers to pay employees during the lockdown also stood toothless. Indeed,
the Central government violated its own orders by not paying all MGNREGA job card holders as
technically the Central government employs them. The fundamental problems will remain unless a
deeper introspection of the workforce, skills portfolio and innovation capital is performed. Lax legal
enforcement cannot be a justification to whittle them down further.
The Indian workforce has consistently depended on so-called ‘casual labour’ for decades. As per the
2017 Economic Survey, there are about 14 crore migrants, half of whom are inter-State workers.
Informal workers contribute to nearly 50% of the GDP and inter-State migrant workers contribute to
about 6% of the GDP. A majority of the inter-State labourers are self-employed and/or engaged in
casual labour with limited opportunities for skill building and increased wages. Despite the threat of
automation and mechanisation, the Labour Ministry has sought to focus its skill development
initiatives primarily on the formal sector. There is an urgent need to better assess the capabilities
and improve the skills of the informal sector as well.

 Impact on workers and country

The unacceptably high levels of informal employment have negative impacts not just on the workers
but also on the country. First, the informal sector does not provide learning and training
opportunities and invests little on their workers, hindering their chances to upgrade. Second, it
compounds the existing inequality in the country. It presents itself as a source of income for poor
families, whose children often drop out from education to help support their families. In doing so,
they halt their own development in formal education or training, leading to sustained low wages.
Historically marginalised communities such as Dalits, Muslims, and Adivasis are disproportionately
affected by this. Finally, a healthy workforce is a necessary and sufficient condition for a healthy
country. From an economic standpoint, a healthy workforce implies higher levels of productivity.
And it is an end in itself from a constitutional standpoint.

 The RBI tunes in to the economy

 The central bank is showing signs of shifting away from its rigid inflation targeting policy

There is nothing like a crisis to concentrate the mind. The salience of this saying may be found in the
changes taking place in the economic policymaking establishments of the world. The COVID-19-
triggered recession had led to some of their strongly held assumptions being revised.

 Shift away from dogma

Perhaps the most significant of them is the shift indicated by the Chair of the Federal Reserve (Fed),
Jerome Powell, declaring that the Fed will not let inflation stand in the way of maximising
employment. The practical counterpart of this is that the Fed will no longer raise rates pre-
emptively, i.e., in anticipation of inflation. The reason for this, he declared, was that the Phillips
Curve, the relationship between inflation and unemployment, may no longer hold in the U.S.
economy. Mr. Powell went on to say that he will even be guided by the consideration of
unemployment among vulnerable groups within the American population, namely African-
Americans and Hispanics. It took a lawyer to call out the emperor. The Phillips Curve has been a
mighty presence in the canon of Anglo-American economics.

Yoked as much of India’s economic policymaking has been to intellectual developments in the West
one would expect some changes in how our own central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), will
change now that the Fed has. We are not disappointed. In the recent reconstitution of the Monetary
Policy Committee, which conducts monetary policy in India, we can find a refreshing shift away from
dogma. Not all its members may be macro-economists in the conventional sense but their work
conveys that they will not be governed by rigid adherence to the model of inflation underlying RBI’s
inflation targeting policy. This change has not come a day too early, and India’s government and
central bank have done no one any favours by bringing it about. Data show that the model that
currently guides India’s inflation control strategy may be quite irrelevant. This is seen in the recent
behaviour of inflation. We know that output contracted by more than 23% in the first quarter of this
year. Despite this staggering decline the inflation rate did not budge, an experience that flies in the
face of the proposition that inflation reflects an ‘over heating’ economy, one growing too fast in
relation to its potential. This view represents the RBI’s official understanding of inflation, and
presumably forms the basis of its policy of inflation targeting. It was endorsed by the Government of
India when it legislated the modern monetary policy framework to enable the RBI to pursue inflation
targeting. If the Phillips Curve, which the RBI’s approach internalises, exists, inflation should have
abated as India’s economy contracted during the lockdown, implying a ‘cooling off’ as it were.

So far the RBI has shown little time for a handy account of inflation that can explain the recent
experience of inflation in India. It had been imagined with developing economies in mind, and is
based on the idea that food prices are an important determinant of inflation along with imported
inflation. Accordingly, a macroeconomic contraction need not lower inflation.

 Model to forecast inflation

A committee somewhere may hardly be sufficient to bring about a change in the mindset of a major
arm of the Indian state. Hopefully, though, the economic havoc wreaked by COVID-19 will lead to a
more sober and rooted policymaking. We may even be seeing some green shoots. A recent working
paper of the RBI’s research department has received attention in the media for suggesting that a
more eclectic model than the one that underlies inflation targeting does a better job of forecasting
inflation in India. This model accepts a role for food prices, a possibility that is missed when
embracing economic models developed in the western hemisphere, where food prices have stopped
trending upwards over half a century ago. Better late than never, we might say. That India’s central
bank is finally alive to India’s economy is surely good news for Indians.

 Unpleasant spectacle

 The tussle between State govt. and High Court in A.P. should not be allowed to escalate

The sudden escalation of an ongoing tussle between the judiciary and the ruling YSR Congress party
in Andhra Pradesh makes for an unpleasant spectacle. The limits of propriety are being stretched, as
the allegations being bandied about have taken distinctly political overtones. With the CM, Y.S.
Jagan Mohan Reddy, writing to the Chief Justice of India, S.A. Bobde, complaining about the
allegedly hostile attitude of the Andhra Pradesh High Court against him and his government, and
making public details of the letter that contains explosive allegations against a serving Supreme
Court judge, the conflict is embarrassingly out in the open. Meanwhile, the High Court has directed
the CBI to take over the investigation into the registry’s complaints against allegedly defamatory,
inciting and derogatory social media posts against the judiciary as well as individual judges, and to
examine whether these attacks were part of a larger conspiracy. The CM alleges that the High Court
is being controlled by loyalists of his predecessor in office and political rival, N. Chandrababu Naidu,
and has passed a slew of orders against his regime and its actions. The High Court, the petitioner on
the administrative side, argues that not only is the State police reluctant to take action against those
carrying on an online campaign against the court but it is actively pursuing complaints of similar
offences against Mr. Jagan Mohan and arresting the perpetrators. It says many of those posting on
social media against the High Court judges are from the YSR Congress.

The conflict is based on mutual accusations that the High Court is hostile to the State government,
and that the latter is abetting a political campaign against the judges. It is disturbing enough that
some judicial orders are seen in a political light, or lend themselves to such an interpretation. It
becomes quite ominous if these charges give rise to open threats and abuse. The government has
sought to ease the situation by offering no objection to the CBI inquiry. It is presumably waiting for
the outcome of the CM’s unusual missive to the CJI, who in turn faces a dilemma as he cannot be
seen as either ignoring a written complaint from an elected leader or giving undue credence to
charges from a disgruntled litigant. The problem is that allegations of possible judicial bias, which are
difficult to establish, are combined with those of misconduct, a serious charge. The right thing would
probably be for the CJI to order an inquiry into the letter in accordance with the apex court’s internal
procedure. Regardless of what happens, it may end the recriminations. India can ill-afford a public
perception that judges have strong political loyalties. For, that will undermine faith in an
independent judiciary.

 Intemperate letter

 The Maharashtra Governor is communalising the government response to the pandemic

Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s intemperate letter to Chief Minister Uddhav
Thackeray, in which he mocked the latter, questioned his faith and even took a jibe at secularism, a
fundamental tenet of the Constitution, is disgraceful. His letter, written purportedly to seek an early
reopening of temples, could have urged that without the accompanying scorn and derision. The
Governor reduced himself to the level of a troll warrior, by declaring that “our gods and goddesses
have been condemned to remain in lockdown” and wondering whether the CM has “suddenly
turned secular”. He wrote to the CM that the latter used to be a “strong votary of Hindutva”, and
cited his visits to temples as proof. This forces the conclusion that the intent, purpose and premise
of the letter were all wrong. A person’s faith in Hinduism and its practice is not Hindutva. The
Constitution envisages no role for a CM’s faith in his functioning. Moreover, it is not the Governor’s
job to interfere in the daily functioning of an elected government. Communication between the
Governor and CM must be perfectly civil and respectful besides being constitutionally appropriate.
And at any rate, restrictions on gatherings at places of worship as a measure to combat a pandemic
are not related to the concept of secularism.
His warped logic apart, Mr. Koshyari has a track record of privileging his political fealties over norms
and propriety. In November 2019, he held a swearing-in for BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis as the
State’s Chief Minister, in a dubious attempt to pre-empt the formation of a Shiv Sena-led alliance
government. He continued to wade into political controversies, in a manner unbecoming of his
office. Mr. Thackeray rightly reminded the Governor of the fact that secularism was a “key
component” of the Constitution and the need to take care of people while being sensitive to their
beliefs and sentiments. Mr. Thackeray also descended into avoidable grandstanding in the letter by
reiterating his own Hindutva credentials and revisiting earlier tussles with the Governor. NCP Chief
Sharad Pawar on the other hand, called out the Governor’s ill-advised move in a letter to Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, in which he expressed “shock” and “surprise” that the letter was released
to the media. The Governor could convey his views to the CM, but the “kind of language” was
unsuitable for someone holding a constitutional office, Mr. Pawar pointed out. Maharashtra is
fighting a battle against COVID-19, and all steps in this regard must be based entirely on a proper
analysis of the situation. Any political considerations can only be damaging, and a communal one will
be dangerous. It is unfortunate that the Governor sought to insert himself into the situation in an
extremely unhelpful manner. He must retreat and let the Council of Ministers and the Chief Minister
take decisions that they consider appropriate and timely.

 21 Bihar MLAs want CM to step down

Twenty-one dissident M.L.As. of the Bihar Ruling Congress headed by Mr. Vidyakar Kavi met the
Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, this morning [October 14] and demanded a change in leadership
in the State. Their plea was that the Chief Minister, Mr. Daroga Prasad Rai, should either step down
voluntarily or seek a vote of confidence from the Ruling Congress Legislature Party. During their 20-
minute talk with the Prime Minister the dissidents apprised her of the “misdeeds” of the Rai
Government which they feared would spell disaster for the party in the next general elections. They
charged that the image of the Government and party had been hopelessly tarnished because its
Ministers “indulged in corruption, took bribes and disgraced themselves through drinking orgies.”
They also told the Prime Minister that the Rai Government had totally failed to tackle the fast
deteriorating law and order situation, stem the naxalite violence in North Bihar districts of
Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga and fill up crucial vacancies for the posts of the Chief Secretary and
Director of Health Services in the State on account of various pulls and counterpulls.